scholarly journals What's behind a Face: Person Context Coding in Fusiform Face Area as Revealed by Multivoxel Pattern Analysis

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 2893-2899 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. van den Hurk ◽  
F. Gentile ◽  
B. M. Jansma
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Multivoxel Pattern Analysis ◽  
Face Area

Revisiting the Role of the Fusiform Face Area in Expertise

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1345-1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merim Bilalić
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Multiple Objects ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Single Category ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

The fusiform face area (FFA) is considered to be a highly specialized brain module because of its central importance for face perception. However, many researchers claim that the FFA is a general visual expertise module that distinguishes between individual examples within a single category. Here, I circumvent the shortcomings of some previous studies on the FFA controversy by using chess stimuli, which do not visually resemble faces, together with more sensitive methods of analysis such as multivariate pattern analysis. I also extend the previous research by presenting chess positions, complex scenes with multiple objects, and their interrelations to chess experts and novices as well as isolated chess objects. The first experiment demonstrates that chess expertise modulated the FFA activation when chess positions were presented. In contrast, single chess objects did not produce different activation patterns among experts and novices even when the multivariate pattern analysis was used. The second experiment focused on the single chess objects and featured an explicit task of identifying the chess objects but failed to demonstrate expertise effects in the FFA. The experiments provide support for the general expertise view of the FFA function but also extend the scope of our understanding about the function of the FFA. The FFA does not merely distinguish between different exemplars within the same category of stimuli. More likely, it parses complex multiobject stimuli that contain numerous functional and spatial relations.

scholarly journals Individual face and house-related eye movement patterns distinctively activate FFA and PPA in the absence of faces and houses

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihui Wang ◽  
Florian Baumgartner ◽  
Falko R. Kaule ◽  
Michael Hanke ◽  
Stefan Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Gaze Patterns ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
Uniform Background ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Parahippocampal Place Area

We investigated if the fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) contain a representation of fixation sequences that are typically used when looking at faces or houses. For this purpose, we instructed observers to follow a dot presented on a uniform background. The dot's movements represented gaze paths acquired separately while observers were looking at face or house pictures. Even when gaze dispersion differences were controlled, face- and house-associated gaze patterns could be discriminated by multivariate pattern analysis in the FFA and PPA. The discrimination of face- and house-associated gaze patterns in FFA and PPA was more sensitive for the current observer’s own gazes than for another observer’s gaze. Moreover, the discrimination of the observer’s own gaze patterns was specific to FFA and PPA, but was not observed in early visual areas (V1 – V4) or superior parietal lobule and frontal eye fields. These findings indicate a link between perception and action - the complex gaze patterns that are used to explore faces and houses - in the FFA and PPA.

scholarly journals Individual face- and house-related eye movement patterns distinctively activate FFA and PPA

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihui Wang ◽  
Florian Baumgartner ◽  
Falko R. Kaule ◽  
Michael Hanke ◽  
Stefan Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Gaze Patterns ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
Uniform Background ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Parahippocampal Place Area

AbstractWe investigated if the fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) contain a representation of fixation sequences that are typically used when looking at faces or houses. Here, we instructed observers to follow a dot presented on a uniform background. The dot’s movements represented gaze paths acquired separately from observers looking at face or house pictures. Even when gaze dispersion differences were controlled, face- and house-associated gaze patterns could be discriminated by fMRI multivariate pattern analysis in FFA and PPA, more so for the current observer’s own gazes than for another observer’s gaze. The discrimination of the observer’s own gaze patterns was not observed in early visual areas (V1 – V4) or superior parietal lobule and frontal eye fields. These findings indicate a link between perception and action—the complex gaze patterns that are used to explore faces and houses—in the FFA and PPA.

scholarly journals Erratum to “Adaptation in the fusiform face area (FFA): Image or Person?” [Vision Research 49 (23) (2009) 2800–2807]

2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (15) ◽  
pp. e1-e3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaokun Xu ◽  
Xiaomin Yue ◽  
Mark D. Lescroart ◽  
Irving Biederman ◽  
Jiye G. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Vision Research ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Face Area

P34. Working memory for faces in congenital prosopagnosia: altered neural representations in the fusiform face area

2018 ◽  
Vol 129 (8) ◽  
pp. e80-e81
Author(s):  
A. Haeger ◽  
C. Pouzat ◽  
V. Luecken ◽  
K. N’Diaye ◽  
C.E. Elger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Congenital Prosopagnosia

Learning to See Biological Motion: Brain Activity Parallels Behavior

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 1669-1679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily D. Grossman ◽  
Randolph Blake ◽  
Chai-Youn Kim
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Biological Motion ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Perceptual Performance ◽  
Trained Observers ◽  
Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus

Individuals improve with practice on a variety of perceptual tasks, presumably reflecting plasticity in underlying neural mechanisms. We trained observers to discriminate biological motion from scrambled (nonbiological) motion and examined whether the resulting improvement in perceptual performance was accompanied by changes in activation within the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform “face area,” brain areas involved in perception of biological events. With daily practice, initially naive observers became more proficient at discriminating biological from scrambled animations embedded in an array of dynamic “noise” dots, with the extent of improvement varying among observers. Learning generalized to animations never seen before, indicating that observers had not simply memorized specific exemplars. In the same observers, neural activity prior to and following training was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neural activity within the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform “face area” reflected the participants' learning: BOLD signals were significantly larger after training in response both to animations experienced during training and to novel animations. The degree of learning was positively correlated with the amplitude changes in BOLD signals.

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